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THE COLORS 
OF THE REPUBLIC 



THE COLORS 
OF THE REPUBLIC 



BY 

The Rev. George Craig Stewart, L.H.D. 

Rector of St Luke's Church, Evanston, 111. 



MILWAUKEE 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

1915 



J K n^3 



61 



r 



COPYRIGHT BY 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

1915 



OEC 13 1915 

©CI.A4 16840 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Colors of the Eepublic 7 

Red for War 12 

White for Purity 29 

Blue for Religion 46 



"The typical American is he who, whether rich 
or poor, whether dwelling in the North, South, 
East, or West, whether scholar, professional man, 
merchant, manufacturer, farmer, or skilled 
worker for wages, lives the life of a good citizen 
and good neighbor ; who believes loyally and with 
all his heart in his country's institutions, and in 
the underlying principles on which these institu- 
tions are built; who directs both his private and 
his public life by sound principles; who cherishes 
high ideals; and who aims to train his children 
for a useful life and for their country's serv- 
ice." — President Butler, 

"0 Beautiful! my Country! 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
Among the nations bright beyond compare? 
What were our lives without thee? 
What all our lives to save thee? 
We reck not what we gave thee; 
We will not dare to doubt thee, 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!" 

— Lowell. 



^^^k:^^'^^'s^¥^'^^^^e!^^'^<.^^ 



THE COLORS OF THE 
REPUBLIC 

Colors play a large part in Nature. 
They also play a large part in the 
life of the individual, of the nation, 
and of the Church. The average man 
may not be conscious of their value. 
Scarlet may indeed ^^ sound like a 
trumpet'' to Helen Keller with her 
exquisite sensibilities; the colors of 
Our Lady's coat may be to William 
Morris ^^ something better than good 
news"; Stephen Phillips may burst 
into an irrational rapture about 
^Hhat bluer blue," that ^^ greener 
green." But most of us continue to 
7 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



walk unscathed among furnaces of 
color. We are like Peter Bell: 

"In vain, through every changeful year 
Did Nature lead him as before; 
A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more." 

But it is something more. Yellow 
is something more, as witness the 
phrase "a streak of yellow'' or ^^ yel- 
low journalism'' or ^'a yellow dog," 
Indeed Mr. Havelock Ellis has writ- 
ten a fascinating article on the psy- 
chology of yellow in which he shows 
the influence of Christianity in de- 
throning this color of the pagan gods 
in favor of the darker end of the 
spectrum. 

8 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



The Church colors speak a lan- 
guage of their own: 

VIOLET 

"As if she would confess 
How fragrant is humility, how great 
The power of the imperial estate 
Of penitence. 

In this her abject hour is on her set 
The purple of her Lord's magnificence." 

WHITE 

"Since He is at her side, 
And she — child, sister, bride! — 
White-frocked may run 
All merry to His praise 
And sing her Gaudeamus in the sun." 

RED 

"That cries, ^The heavenly seed 
Upon whose mystic fruit the soul shall feed 
In blood is planted, and with blood embued. 

9 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Red as a wound the piercing Spirit's path; 
By death is life renewed.' " 

GREEN 

"When 
Every quickened branch and twig receives 
The garlanded delight of budding leaves." 

''Green on her bough the tendril clings; 
But purple is the fruit upon her vine, 
White shines the Bread of Angels, as a rose 
Red is her wine." 

Now the national colors, too, are 
rich with significance. A flag is some- 
thing more than an ornament; it is, 
to use the glowing words of Bishop 
Brent, "a symbol of the past and fu- 
ture, of achievement and responsi- 
bility, of history and inspiration. 
If it is rich in glory, it is also 
crammed with risks— the boast of 

ID 



1 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



yesterday, the hope of to-morrow.'' 
Surely it is not mere national prej- 
udice which sees in our own Stars and 
Stripes a standard of surpassing 
beauty. The other day we were talk- 
ing with a missionary from Central 
China,— talking of the orient, of the 
Chinese people, of the quaint com- 
plexities of their language, of the esti- 
mate they place upon the w^estern 
peoples. He told us how they called 
England "the land of the brave," and 
Germany "the land of virtue,'' and 
France ^^the land of law." ^^And 
what," we eargerly inquired, "is their 
name for America ? ' ' His reply came 
as a thrilling surprise : ^^ Why, Amer- 
ica," said he, "thej call ^The Land 
of the Beautiful Flag!'" 
II 



RED FOR WAR 

Red is the color of war. In the 
vision of the seer at Patmos ^' there 
went out another horse that was red, 
and power was given to him that sat 
thereon to take peace from the earth 
and that they should kill one another, 
and there was given unto him a great 
sword.'' Yes, the red in our flag is 
reminiscent of wars in our past his- 
tory ; prophetic too, perhaps, of wars 
in which we may be involved in the 
future. The question is often asked 
whether it can ever be right for a 
Christian nation to go to war. We 
are talking much of national pre- 

12 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



paredness, of a larger army and 
navy, of citizens trained in the sci- 
ence of war, and there are not want- 
ing many serious, earnest, high- 
minded men and women who see in 
this movement an alarming tendency 
toward that very militarism which 
has plunged all Europe into the pres- 
ent insanity. 

We are all agreed, I think, that war 
is in itself "a son of hell,'' as Shake- 
speare called it, or plain murder, as 
Lowell called it. 

"Ez fer war, I call it murder — 

There you hev it plain an' flat. 
I don't want to go no furder 

Than my Testyment fer that." 

War is murder, wholesale murder. 
13 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



^^Thou shalt not kill" is a divine law 
which applies to nations as well as 
to individuals. The heart of Chris- 
tianity is forgiveness of enemies, pa- 
tience, mercy, generosity, love; and 
the end of Christianity is life— life 
more abundant. The heart of war is 
hate and the end of it is death. 

"I am a pestilence 
Sweeping the world — 
Hate is the root of me. 
Death is the fruit of me. 
Swift is my stroke. 

"Blood is the sign of me. 
Steel is the twine of me; 
Thus shall ye know me; 
I am the death of life, 
I am the life of death, 
I am war!" 

14 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Very well, then, says the pacifist, if 
you believe that, then the only heroic 
thing to do is to put your conviction 
into practice. The way to stop war 
is to stop preparing for it. Let 
America take the risk— success al- 
ways is found, you know, on the other 
side of a risk— let America take the 
risk and set the example to the world 
of a powerful nation that is Chris- 
tian and that proposes to "lay down 
arms,'' thus challenging the rest of 
the world to come up to her high 
plane of national idealism. 

To this the practical man replies, 

Peace at any price is not only a weak 

slogan but a wicked one as well. 

What! You would reduce us to a 

15 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



nation of mollycoddles, a nation of 
weaklings, the prey of every aggres- 
sive and unscrupulous foe, helpless to 
defend ourselves and impotent to 
serve our neighbors? You would 
tear the red stripes from the flag and 
leave only the white symbol of sur- 
render? If you adopt the policy of 
the pacifist you may not be a coward 
but you are certainly a dangerous 
sentimentalist. Here is Mr. Eoose- 
velt with his characteristic scorn of 
all opponents pleading for national 
preparedness. Here is President 
Lowell of Harvard with his story of 
the captain on the ship-wrecked At- 
lantic liner who refused to shoot the 
mutineer because ^^he was too near 
i6 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 

eternity to take life/' though the shot 
would have saved a hundred people 
who were sacrificed by panic. ^'That 
captain was not a coward/' says 
Lowell, ^^but his sentiments unfitted 
him for a responsible post in an 
emergency. ' ' Here is Edith Wharton 
with her recent poem on the flag, 
which she hears crying out against 
restraint : 

"Oh, cut my silken ties 

From the roof of the palace of peace ; 
Give back my stars to the skies, 

My stripes to the storm-striped seas! 

"Or else if ye bid me yield, 

Then down with my crimson bars, 
And o'er all my azure field 

Sow poppies instead of stars!" 

Now the reconciliation of these two 
17 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



conflicting points of view is found in 
the recognition of peace as the ulti- 
mate Christian ideal and in the rec- 
ognition of present national military 
preparedness as a necessary ap- 
proach to that peace. 

Brute force has its moral sanctions, 
sanctions that we all recognize. Civ- 
ilization may raise, and actually has 
raised to a higher level the reasons 
which lead to and precipitate the ap- 
peal to arms, but it has not as yet 
given up its appeal to force in order 
to maintain order. The organization 
of social instruments of coercion is 
still necessary to secure the observ- 
ance of law. Might, indeed, is not 
right, but right must be supported by 
i8 



n 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



might. We have a police force to 
which appeal may be made if men do 
not treat each other justly, if parents 
will not treat their children with hu- 
manity, if the well-being of the com- 
munity is threatened. I shall not 
condemn a man as im-Christian if 
he be a policeman. I shall not con- 
denni a member of the militia who 
resjDonds to a call from the govern- 
ment to quell a riot. Force is neces- 
sary to maintain order even in a 
democracy. Can we hope, then, in 
the world as it actually is to-day, to 
dispense with force in our national 
and international relations? 

The question from a Christian 
standpoint is non militia^ sed malitia. 
19 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



It is not the position of the soldier 
but the disposition of the soldier that 
is in question. A nation is not to be 
judged as Christian or non-Christian 
because it is at war, but because of 
the motives which involve it. 

War is devilish, but there is some- 
thing far more devilish than war, 
and that is submission to wrong. 
Peace is heavenly, but there is some- 
thing far more heavenly than peace, 
and that is defence of the right. Con- 
cord witnessed to that principle, and 
Lexington, and Valley Forge. Get- 
tysburg witnessed to that principle, 
and Antietam, and Missionary Ridge. 
It is for us to see that we are pre- 
pared to defend our liberties. It is 
20 



I 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 

also ours to see that in the hour of war 
we are able to face the whole world 
unashamed of our national conduct 
and to avow with William Watson: 

"In earth's hearing we can verily say. 

Our hands are pure; for peace, for peace 

weVe striven, 
And not by earth will he soon be forgiven 
Who lit the fire accursed which flames to-day." 

In other words, the red of our flag 
stands for sacrifice; it is the color 
of the wine in the eucharistic cup, 
the color of the blood poured forth 
by the Captain of our salvation. It 
stands for a national life not stored 
up for selfish ends but laid down in 
service of others. Every Christian 
theologian will tell you that the death 

21 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



of Christ was salutary for the race, 
but not one of them on that account 
excuses Judas or Pontius Pilate or 
the envious, plotting ecclesiastics who 
hounded Him to His death. And that 
same mystery of atonement, with its 
abiding values, lies hidden in the ag- 
onies of war. The thing in itself is 
wrong, and woe to him through whom 
the offense cometh, but when it must 
needs be, then the Christian, like his 
Master, the Christian nation, like the 
Christian individual, must face Geth- 
semane and even Calvary, assured 
that under the divine compulsion of 
evil to good ends the issues will in the 
long run be salutary to the race. 
^^AU the nations involved in the 

22 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



present struggle are,'' to quote the 
Editor of the Hibhert Journal, 
^ learning the same lesson at the same 
time. All are engaged together in 
the bitter but salutary process of dis- 
covering their souls!" One often 
hears a sneer at Isaiah's prophecy of 
the time when swords shall be beaten 
into ploughshares and spears into 
pruning-hooks. But that is not 
merely a prophecy. It is an obvious 
and terrible fact. The sword is a 
ploughshare ploughing up the souls 
of nations for a new spiritual seed- 
time and harvest ; the spear is a prun- 
ing-hook lopping off the unhealthy 
growths that have been choking and 
stunting national life, making it 
23 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



smug and selfish and godless. There 
is a peace that is despicable. 

"Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the 
days gone by, 
When the poor are hovelPd and hustled to- 
gether, each sex, like swine. 
When only the ledger lives, and when only not 
all men lie." 

There is also a war that is noble. 
And ^4t lightens my despair'' when 
I see the red in the flag and know that 
it challenges American citizenship to 
strive, yes even unto blood, rather 
than surrender one principle of 
American democracy. 

^'We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we 
are noble still, 
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the 
better mind. 

24 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 

It is better to fight for the good than to rail at 
the ill!^' 

The president of Harvard Univer- 
sity has recently proposed a league 
to enforce peace. ' ' The kernel of the 
proposal,'^ he says, 'Hhe feature in 
which it differs from other plans, lies 
in the obligation of all the members 
of the league to declare war on any 
member violating the pact of peace/' 
that is, upon any nation which as a 
member of the league resorts to arms 
before submitting its dispute to an 
international tribunal. Such a league 
would be an eft'ective means of main- 
taining peace, but to be effective it 
would mean, of course, that each par- 
ticipating nation would be able to 
25 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



furnisli its quota of ^^ warriors for 
peace.'' 

The plan impresses me as wise, as 
sane, as practicable. It is but another 
argument for national preparedness, 
preparedness for something more 
than defense, preparedness for a 
share in compelling a world peace. 

Let us give ourselves to the Presi- 
dent's ideal of a trained citizen sol- 
diery. The plan has been called Uto- 
pian. I suppose it is, for you remem- 
ber that in Sir Thomas More's Utopia 
^Hhey detested war as a very brutal 
thing," and yet they accustomed 
themselves daily to military exercises 
^Hhat in case of necessity they might 
not be quite useless." Switzerland is 
26 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Utopian, but the boundaries of 
Switzerland are preserved inviolate. 
Training camps like that at Platts- 
burg and the one at Fort Sheridan 
may be Utopian. We are glad they 
are. ^^In case of necessity they will 
not be found useless.'^ 

God bless the nation, and may the 
red in the flag never be dimmed by 
mere self-interest. God bless the 
President and keep his vision clear, 
his judgment sound, his spirit un- 
daunted. And God bless the issues 
of this terrible conflict, that out of 
this universal bath of blood, human- 
ity may rise new-born, ^^ new-pithed, 
new-souled, new-visioned up the 
steeps to those great altitudes 

2/ 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



whereat the weak live not/' but 
where those live who have come up 
through great tribulation and washed 
their robes and made them white in 
the blood— yes, of the Lamb whose 
sacrifice is shared by all those who 
battle and suffer for the right as God 
gives them to see the right. 



28 



WHITE FOR PURITY 

Our flag is not a solid field of red. 
If it were, it would stand for bloody 
revolution, lawlessness, anarchy. Our 
flag is not a solid field of white. If it 
were, it would stand for weakness, 
submissiveness, surrender. There is 
something worse than war, and that 
is submission to wrong. There is 
something better than peace, and that 
is war for truth, and righteousness 
and honorable peace. The red stands 
for means, the white symbolizes ends. 
The red represents contest ; the white 
represents character, won through 
striving even unto blood. But it is 
29 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



the white, remember— the white of 
vision, of the light of ideals, of moral 
quality— that alone justifies the red. 
Historians have now before them the 
proclamations or dispatches of Em- 
peror Napoleon and the dispatches 
and reports of Arthur, Duke of Well- 
ington. I am told that there is not 
one report or proclamation issued by 
Napoleon in which ^ ^ glory '^ is not 
mentioned or one in which ^^duty'^ is 
referred to, and that there is literally 
not one report or dispatch of the 
Duke of Wellington in which the 
word ^^ glory'' occurs, nor a single one 
in which ^^duty" is not set forward 
as the central thing. 

The white, then, stands first of 
30 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



all for our national vision, the white 
light of our national ideals, the one 
great dominating purpose of the re- 
public which determines our duties of 
citizenship. ''Where there is no vis- 
ion the people perish." America has 
always stood in the eyes of the world 
as peculiarly the place of vision, the 
home of ideals, the land of promise. 
The immigrants, approaching our 
shore for the first time, crowd the side 
of the ship, straining eager eyes to 
the west to catch the first view of the 
new, the promised land. They come 
from an old civilization to a new 
world, out of the past into the future. 
Slavs there are from the land of Co- 
pernicus and Huss, Kosciusko and 
31 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Sobieski and Pulaski; Italians there 
are, and we call them '^ dagos/' yet I 
shall never forget that every time we 
sing ^^Hail Columbia, happy land," 
we are immortalizing one of these 
dagos, and every time we sing 
^^ America" we are immortalizing an- 
other. Yes, and when the sinking 
ships flash through the storm their 
silent prayers for help, and other 
ships turn and sweep to the rescue, 
the name of another dago ^^is written 
in the everlasting book of pity." 
Men and women from the land of 
Homer and Pericles, men and women 
from the land of Vikings, swart sons 
of Nineveh and Babylon, fair chil- 
32 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



dren of the land of Sagas, sad people 
out of Palestine— 

^^Mothers of men who shall bring to us 
The glory of Titian, the grandeur of Huss ; 
Children in whose frail arms shall rest 
Prophets and singers and saints of the West." 

And what is it that they see as they 
approach our shore? A colossal fig- 
ure, the Statue of Liberty, bearing 
aloft, with arms outstretched, not the 
sword of Eden's warning cherubim, 
saying ^^ Beware and begone'^; not a 
great bag of gold, as if to say, ^^Here 
is wealth, here is riches, here is idle- 
ness, here is nothing to do but fatten 
in the sun;" but a light, a torch, as 
if to say, ^^Here is light for your path, 
here is opportunity to grow, here is 
33 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



a fair chance, here is a white country 
and, whatever your skin, here is a 
place where the white of your clean 
soul shall give you rank and station 
and an equal chance/' 

The great ideal distinctly American 
is the ideal of democracy, and if you 
ask me to define the democratic ideal 
I reply: ^^It is the recognition of the 
personality in all sorts and conditions 
of men/' Back of the democratic 
form of government is the democratic 
ideal, and that ideal is an ideal of hu- 
man nature, is the essentially Chris- 
tian ideal of human nature, that 
^Hhere is neither circumcision nor un- 
circumcision, Jew nor Greek, barbar- 
34 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



ian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but 
Christ is all in all." 

Everybody knows the definition of 
democracy in those innnortal words 
of Lincoln, at Gettysburg ; words for 
which he was indebted to the Boston 
preacher, Theodore Parker, who had 
spoken of government ''over all the 
people by all the people for all the 
people"— not govermnent of the peo- 
ple by the bosses for the trusts, not 
government of the poor by the well- 
to-do for the rich, not government 
of the well-to-do by the poor for the 
benefit of demagogic leaders, but a 
fair chance for everybody. Denial of 
that central principle is treason to the 
white in the flag. 

35 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



The flag is menaced every time an 
individual or a firm puts money gain 
above the good of the whole com- 
munity. It is menaced by every man 
who thinks he can be a good Amer- 
ican and live off the community in- 
stead of for the community ; by every- 
one who puts vulgar conmiercialism 
above clean hands in politics, in busi- 
ness, in private life. People often 
misjudge America. They call us vul- 
gar money-getters. They deny us any 
real culture. They point to our po- 
litical graft. They cry shame at our 
economic evils. But, if they look 
deeper, if they enter more intimately 
into the spirit of the American peo- 
ple, they will find what Professor 
36 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Peabody has called "an inexpungable 
and persistent faith in ethical ideal- 
ism/' an hereditary strain of moral 
seriousness which registers in the 
constant, unceasing battle for eco- 
nomic and political reform and for 
the triumph of the high principles 
embodied in our Constitution. We 
are not committed to any such base 
ideal as ^^ material prosperity." We 
do not as a nation put money first. 
We do not as a people write across 
our colors the miserable whine— ^^ A 
man must live ! ' ' We will not 

" justify 

Low shift and trick to treason high 
By that self-evident reply, 
'A man must live!' 

37 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



"There are times when a man must die. 
Imagine for a battle cry. 

From soldiers with a sword to hold — 
From soldiers with the flag unrolPd, 
This coward's whine, this liar's lie: 
^A man must live!' " 

The white, then, stands for the 
national vision of democracy. It also 
stands for national virtue. There is 
solemn need to ponder the warning 
of Mr. Bryce in his '^American Com- 
monwealth ' ^ " The more democratic 
republics become, the more the 
masses grow conscious of their own 
power, the more do they need to live 
not only by patriotism but by rever- 
ence and self-control ; the more essen- 
tial to their well-being are those 
38 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



sources whence reverence and self- 
control flow." The sharp, concise 
warning of Matthew Arnold is still 
in order: '^ Moral causes govern the 
standing and the falling of men and 
nations. They save or destroy them- 
selves by a silent, inexorable fatal- 
ity." When we speak of national 
preparedness to keep our place hon- 
orably among the nations of the 
earth, we need to get down to what 
Kipling calls 

"The imperishable plinth of things. 
Seen and unseen, which touch our peace." 

We need to realize afresh that the 
theory of ethics and the evidence of 
history concur in teaching that the 
39 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



destiny of a nation is determined at 
the point of moral decision. Many 
a nation has been submerged in its 
own prosperity. Not trade, nor 
crops, nor ships, nor armies, nor 
navies are the guaranties of national 
security and peace. Rome went down 
because personal forms of vice had 
been translated into public life. 
Drunkenness, gluttony, licentious- 
ness sapped the energy, the will 
power, the self-reliance of the people, 
and the nation lost its recuperative 
and reproductive powers. The two 
great causes of the fall of Rome— 
one directly moral and indirectly eco- 
nomic; the other directly economic, 
but vitally, essentially moral— were 
40 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



drunkenness and slavery. The white 
of our flag protests against many- 
stains on our national life, but these 
are among the chief ones: 

The liquor traffic costs us three 
times as much as meat, five times as 
much as shoes, seven times as much 
as tea and coffee, ten times as much 
as our public schools, and fifty times 
as much as preaching the gospel. It 
costs us $7,000,000 to care for the in- 
mates of our almshouses, and 75 per 
cent, of them are there directly or in- 
directly from drink. Our criminals 
cost us $60,000,000, and 75 per cent, 
of this crime can be traced to drunk- 
enness. It costs us over $13,000,000 
to care for the insane, and one-fourth 
41 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



of the insanity can be traced directly 
or indirectly to drunkenness. It is 
the greatest economic blot to-day on 
our national escutcheon. 

And slavery still threatens the 
nation; not black slavery but white 
slavery, and I mean by that every 
kind of industrialism which depreci- 
ates the human stock by ruthless ex- 
ploitation of flesh and blood without 
safeguards of life and health and 
happiness. I haven't time to expand 
this theme. I only recall a remark 
of an American statesman in 1912, 
when, speaking of the prevalent so- 
cial unrest, he said: ^'We are on the 
eve of a greater crisis than that of the 
civil war.'' Already in this country, 
42 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



and not once or twice, we have felt 
the ^^under-dogs" rising and heard 
them growl, and seen them leap at the 
throats of their oppressors ; the signs 
of economic unrest have been por- 
tentous here perhaps beyond the 
signs in any other nation. It is the 
red of the flag struggling for the 
white of freedom and equal liberty 
for all. 

But, finally, the white stands for 
victory. The white in our flag stands 
for the triumph of virtue in the na- 
tional life and in your life and mine. 
White is not absence of color. It is 
not a blank and colorless thing, nega- 
tive and non-committal, but "a vivid, 
separate thing, like pain or a partic- 
43 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



ular smell.'' It does stand for God's 
forgiveness ; let us never forget that. 
It does stand for robes that were 
stained but are made white through 
the merciful love of the Father for 
His penitent, returning child. But 
it stands also for a positive attitude 
on the part of man. '^ Mercy," as 
Chesterton puts it, ^'does not mean 
not being cruel ; it means a plain and 
positive thing, like the sun," a posi- 
tive tenderness and kindness and 
love. ^'Chastity does not mean ab- 
stention from sexual wrong ; it means 
something flaming, like Joan of 
Arc"; virtue is a bigger thing than 
innocence — it is something won 
through conflict. White is the color 
44 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



not of the skulker, but of one who 
goes forth conquering and to conquer. 
The flag is not merely an ornament. 
It is a symbol ranking next to the 
cross and the sacraments. If it is rich 
with glory, it is also crammed with 
risks— it is the boast of yesterday, the 
hope of to-morrow, and every true 
citizen is continually purifying the 
white in it by his own imperishable 
contribution. Don't stain it. Keep 
the white in it pure, at whatever cost 
of red effort. 

"God end war, but when brute war is ended. 
Yet shall there be many a noble soldier, 
Many a noble battle worth the winning, 
Many a hopeless battle worth the losing. 

Life is a battle, 
Life is a battle, even to sunset.'' 

45 



BLUE FOR RELIGION 

^^The bluejackets of '61"-^^navy 
blue''— the very color suggests at 
first an essay on naval preparedness. 
But blue is not, primarily, the color 
of the navy. Blue is, first of all, as 
Ruskin never wearied of pointing 
out, the symbolic color of the nature 
of God Himself. '^And they saw the 
God of Israel; and there was under 
His feet as it were a paved work of 
sapphire;" ^'and above the firma- 
ment was the likeness of a throne as 
the appearance of sapphire." It was 
the color of the robe of the ephod 
worn by the high priest, the color, 
46 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



according to tradition, of the seam- 
less robe worn by our Lord; and all 
artists without exception have given 
this color to His mother, for there 
is not, I suppose, a Madonna in exist- 
ence which the painter has not 
draped in some exquisite shade of 
blue. 

Blue, then, stands first of all for 
religion. 

^'AU political questions," said 
Mazzini, '^become sooner or later so- 
cial questions, and all social questions 
become sooner or later religious ques- 
tions. '^ ^^ Religion," according to 
Plutarch, "h the bond of all society." 
^^ Religion," according to Burke, ^4s 
the basis of all civil society." ^^Of 
47 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



all the dispositions and habits which 
lead to political prosperity, religion 
and morality are indispensable sup- 
ports/' These are the words of 
Washington. 

Browning is even more inclusive: 

"Religion's all or nothing. 
It's no mere smile of contentment, 
No sigh of aspiration, sir. 
No quality of the finelier tempered clay 
As its whiteness or lightness, 
But stuff o' the very stuff, life o' life." 

Civilization is dependent for its 
very existence upon character, and 
character is dependent upon relig- 
ion. It was not adventure, it was 
not chance that laid the corner- 
stone of the American nation. Qua- 
48 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



ker and Puritan crossed the sea 
that they might worship God and 
practise righteousness according to 
the dictates of their consciences. 
They may have put the blue laws into 
Connecticut; but they put the blue 
into the flag as well, the blue of loy- 
alty to the God of heaven and earth. 
The name of God may not appear in 
our Constitution, but the sapphire of 
the pavement under His feet is 
stamped upon our colors and dyed 
deep into our national life. ^^Civis 
Romanus sum/^ said St. Paul— ^^ I 
am a Roman born, a citizen of no 
mean city''— and we can feel the 
thrill of patriotic pride in the apostle 
as he says it. Civis Americanus 
49 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



sum—1 am an American citizen— is 
the proud claim of every citizen of 
the republic. But there was another 
claim, a larger profession of citizen- 
ship, a loftier note of patriotism ut- 
tered by St. Paul and uttered by us 
to-day— ^' Our commonwealth is in 
heaven!'' Our citizenship is in 
heaven! ^^The most ubiquitous fact 
in history," as John Fiske said, "is 
the instinct in us for God," and the 
highest patriotism salutes in the blue 
of the flag the God in whom we trust, 
the God whose flag is 

"The spacious firmament on high 
With all the blue ethereal sky." 

Now the Christian Church is the 
50 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



witness to this element, this basal fac- 
tor of our national life. 

The Church is the witness to God, 
to His claim upon our allegiance and 
to His imperatives of personal char- 
acter and social conduct. Some men 
forget that. They are inclined to 
give honor to God and to sneer at the 
Church. They say they love God, and 
yet they withhold their support from 
the Church. They call themselves 
truly religious, and yet they never 
attend the services of the Church. 
They are safeguarded and supported 
in their highest standards of morality 
by the organized forces of religion, 
and yet they think we might get 
along very well without the Church. 
51 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Some of them remind me of the little 
boy who wrote an essay on the great 
fire of London, and said: ^^It did a 
lot of good. It purified the city from 
the dregs of the plague and burned 
down eighty-nine churches.'' But 
the Church is no parasite, no ^'beggar 
at the door of the world, represent- 
ing a ragged sentimentalism and 
twanging a feeble harp for pennies 
and smiles. She is not an uncreden- 
tialed wayfarer whining for alms 
from a charitably inclined public 
opinion.'' The Church is the ambas- 
sador of God. The robe of her ephod 
is all of blue. She is dedicated to the 
worship and service of God. She is 
His interpreter to the nation, His 
52 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



witness before the people, His pro- 
phetic voice of warning and pleading, 
of stern rebuke and of tender, wist- 
ful love. She never gives up the 
fight for the heavenly ideals. She 
never is browbeaten into silence by 
the lower standards of opportunism. 
She keeps holding aloft the banner of 
hope, the banner of blue, crying: 

"On to the edge of the waste, 
On to the city of God." 

The blue, as I said in the be- 
ginning, is also the color of the Ma- 
donna and Child, of motherhood and 
childhood, of the family life of our 
land. Never before in the history of 
the race has womanhood occupied the 
53 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



prominent place that it occupies to- 
day. Feminism is the dominant note 
in our novels, our drama, our poetry, 
and, I might also add, our politics. 
Woman rises up and claims for the 
first time equal rights with man, in 
education, in economic freedom, in 
political rights, in the moral demands 
to be made by society upon men and 
women alike. 

^^I am the woman, ark of the Law and sacred arm 

to upbear it, 
I am also the mother, and under the sword 
Which flamed each way to harry us forth from 

the Lord. 
I saw Him young at the portal, weeping and 

staying the rod, 
And I, even I, was His mother, and I yearned 

as the mother of God." 

54 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Yes, the mother ! And, after all is 
said about vocational training for 
women and political activities for 
women, and public careers for wo- 
men, motherhood will ever be the ful- 
crum of woman's largest power in 
determining the life of the nation. 
I am one of those who believe not in 
woman's mere equality with man, but 
in her superiority. ^^ Nothing," as a 
modern essayist says, ^^can overcome, 
for example, that one enormous sex 
superiority that even the male child is 
born closer to his mother than to his 
father. No one staring at that privi- 
lege of motherhood can quite believe 
in the mere equality of the sexes. 
Even the vaguest and most brutal 
55 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



man is womanized by being born.'' 
The duties of a mother in the home 
may be dull and wearisome, but who 
can call them narrowing or petty or 
uninfluential when, like the queen of 
an empire, she is mistress of the eth- 
ics, the art, the literature, the wor- 
ship in that domain where a nation 
is preparing the next generation to 
stride still further up the heights? 
When our great Cathedral was be- 
gun at the national capital in Wash- 
ington—a glorious building that is 
rising stone on stone to its full maj- 
esty when it shall stand as a splendid 
shrine symbolic of our religious 
ideals for the nation— the first stone 
laid was the cornerstone of the chapel 
56 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



of the Holy Nativity, as if to say, 
^^The beginnings of our religious life 
are at Bethlehem, are in the sacred 
family life where God stoops down to 
enter human life, and where even 
His only begotten Son is given into 
the keeping of another. '^ And it was 
a child's hand that laid that corner 
stone, as if to say, ^'It is the children 
upon whom depend the foundations 
of the republic and of the Church of 
the living God.'' 

Yes, it is the childlike spirit of sim- 
plicity and wonder and purity of 
heart that the nation needs, even 
among its leaders. '^Except ye be- 
come as little children" needs to be 
57 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



written across the flag of the country 
and across all our national life. 

If I had time I could prove from 
statistics that the solution of our 
criminal problem, of our social-evil 
problem, of our industrial problem in 
the main, and of our great Christian 
problems, goes back to the education 
of our children in those broad and 
deep religious principles which beget 
solid moral character and genuine 
Christian conduct. As the father of 
one of our living poets said, ^'The 
way to transplant full-grown trees is 
to do it a long time ago.'' The Church 
at present cannot do it, though it can 
help. Our public schools cannot do it, 
though they can help. The Sunday 
58 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



schools cannot do it, though they are 
doing their utmost to help. Only the 
fathers and mothers can do it; and 
most of them are not beginning to do 
all they can do to help. About one- 
third of them depend on the Sunday 
school, for statistics show that about 
one-third of the children enrolled in 
our public schools are in Sunday 
schools as well. But in Sunday school 
we have even at best a ^^short- 
weight" education. We devote thirty 
minutes a week to religion— we'll call 
it an hour if you will— one hour a 
week to religious education, or forty 
hours a year. The public schools de- 
vote more than one thousand hours 
a year to the three R's— reading, 
59 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



writing, and arithmetic— the equiv- 
alent of twenty-five years in Sunday 
school, and we still wonder why our 
children do not know more of the 
Bible and the Church and the funda- 
mentals of the faith. 

And blue is the color of loyalty. 
Everyone knows what ^^true blue'' 
means. It means the very opposite 
of ^^ yellow." It means, in Professor 
Eoyce's words, ^^the willing and prac- 
tical and thorough-going devotion of 
a person to a cause. ' ' And I want to 
dig further into the meaning of it and 
lay down a principle in governing our 
loyalties. This is the principle : The 
lesser and more personal and imme- 
diate loyalties are to be governed and 
60 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



determined by the larger and broader 
and more remote ones. 

A while ago, at Cooper Union, in 
New York, a labor leader in an im- 
passioned speech cried out: ^^ Better 
be a traitor to your country than a 
traitor to your class." That, in my 
opinion, was a treasonable utterance, 
because he put the lesser loyalty 
above the larger. He put his labor 
union above the national union. 

Yes, and I have heard a man say: 
^^I am not interested in missions; we 
have enough to do right here in the 
parish.'' That is treason to the larger 
loyalty to the whole Christian Church 
and the religious needs of the whole 
world. 

6i 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



Yes, and I have known Churchmen 
whose loyalty became bigotry and 
whose devotion became narrow par- 
tisanship because they forgot that 
loyalty to the Anglican communion is 
conditioned by the larger loyalty to 
the Catholic Church universal; and 
loyalty to Catholicity is conditioned 
by still larger loyalty to Christianity, 
and loyalty to Christianity lies within 
the circle of the still larger loyalty 
to absolute truth. 

Not otherwise, then, must our na- 
tional loyalty be interpreted. First 
of all, loyalty to God; and, within 
that, loyalty to the whole human 
brotherhood; and, within that, na- 
tional loyalty ; and, within that, state 
62 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



loyalty; and, within that, civic loy- 
alty; and, within that, community 



loyalty 
loyalty 
loyalty 
self. 



and, within that, parochial 
and, within that, domestic 
and, within that, loyalty to 



Red, white, blue— there they are, 
the colors of the republic, and they 
are the symbols of great principles of 
righteousness and truth and justice 
which are worth defending. Put 
your life behind them. Let them 
really represent your ideals. Live 
them. If necessary, die for them. 
They are the colors of your country. 
63 



THE COLORS OF THE REPUBLIC 



They are also the colors of your 
Church and of her holy faith. 

"Fight for the colors of Christ your King ; 
Fight as He fought for you. 
Fight for the right with all thy might ; 
Stand by the Red, White, and Blue." 



64 



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